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Scholarship Office distributes checks worth over $200K
After a two-month delay, the CNMI Scholarship Office disbursed over $200,000 worth of checks to its first batch of recipients.
According an email sent to CNMI Scholarship recipients, scholarship disbursements were delayed as a result of the CNMI’s economic state. The disbursement of the first batch was initially set in February but that did not happen.
“Although CSO remains closed, our designated staff continue to follow up with the Department of Finance on a weekly basis before and during the shutdown. Unfortunately, due to the current financial state of the CNMI, there is a delay in the processing of all scholarships and many other government obligations,” the email stated.
Fortunately, the CSO was able to process and distribute $212,661 in scholarship grants as of April 22, but as of last week, 18 remain undistributed because there were no response from the recipients via email.
To date, 70% of the first batch of grants have been sent out to their respective recipients. The remaining 30% remains with the CSO.
“CSO followed up with Treasury on April 22 and was able to pick up 150 checks for off-island and online students that were printed. We reached out to the recipients for disbursement instructions that evening via email. We are now at 70% complete with disbursement, only because we have not heard back from the rest of the students in this batch,” the email stated.
CSO wants to apologize for the delay of the first round of grant distributions and would like to assure the next batch that even if there is a delay, CSO keeps checking with the Department of Finance.
CSO would like to encourage CNMI Scholarship recipients to check their emails and respond to the email requesting where and how the recipient can receive the check so CSO can immediately send them out once they become available.
